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by DiogenesKynikos
7 days ago
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> while also acknowledging that there is something different between the conscious experience we are all aware of as humans, and instructions executing on a chip. You say this based on what? Your brain is executing instructions on wetware. The entire universe is governed by physical laws. At its base, the argument that computers can't be conscious is dualist. It assumes that there's some parallel realm of spirit that the brain is peculiarly able to tap into, but which computer programs that function in very similar ways to the brain don't tap into. > the quality of the simulacrum that LLMs produce vs. pre-ML chatbots. It seems to me that you're denigrating LLMs, or implying that they're only simulating thought, as opposed to actually thinking. But the difference between thinking and an extremely good simulacrum of thought is meaningless. They become the same thing. It's a bit like the Mitchell and Webb skit about faking the moon landings, in which the plotters quickly realize that the only way to convincingly fake landing on the moon is to fly a rocket to the moon and film the "fake" landings on the moon. |
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I say it based on the fact that I experience consciousness and therefore know it is a phenomenon wholly separate from the outward effect I have on the world via speech or any other physical action.
>It assumes that there's some parallel realm of spirit that the brain is peculiarly able to tap into, but which computer programs that function in very similar ways to the brain don't tap into.
Ruling this out completely implies that modern science has a total and complete understanding of consciousness and the universe in its entirety, which it does not. I don't think it's unreasonable to leave open the possibility that there is an unexplained phenomenon that explains the conscious experience which is still bounded by the laws of physics.
>.. the difference between thinking and an extremely good simulacrum of thought is meaningless. They become the same thing.
Do they? To me it seems like you equate the process with the result, like saying if I gave you a gift, it doesn't matter whether I bought it or made it by hand, in either case I "made" it because the end result is the same. There is a conscious experience that (hopefully) all humans experience and can testify to, the question is whether or not an LLM predicting tokens based on a giant vector map is experiencing the same thing, which I'd say is obviously not happening. My point about chatbots is about exactly this -- 10 years ago even you would have laughed at somebody that said a hand-rolled chatbot was conscious/thinking, but because the output has improved, now suddenly it's all the same, and your brain is a computer, and Claude has feelings, blah blah.